Category Archives: Coming Up

Hello again! Westwood Radio is back for another year, packed with top quality shows and professional broadcasting from our children.

With the start of the academic year brings new teams, so we have two new Friday groups, broadcasting alternately every week at the new time of 2.15pm. Our Word on the Street boys have also returned and their first show is now up on soundcloud.com/westwoodradio to listen again. They will be broadcasting from 2.15pm live every Thursday. Also, our radio club breakfast show will be returning live every Monday morning at 8.15am.

After the HUGE success of our outdoor broadcast at the West of England ICT Conference a couple of weeks ago, our young broadcasters have continued to go from strength to strength.

Incredibly we have only four weeks left of broadcasting for this academic year, but rest assured that we will be packing in as much live education radio as possible, with four Friday shows and three Monday breakfast shows to end the year in style!

With that in mind, here is the show order for this Friday’s show. As you can see it is packed full of content once again and our team have all been busy writing their own original scripts ready to go mic live at 1.30pm on Friday. After his stellar Glastonbury performance, the team had to include an Ed Sheeran song in the show, so tune in on Friday via the player on radio.westwoodwithiford.org to have your say and get involved with the show. Text us on 07600 17404 or email radio@westwoodwithiford.org.

As if every week isn’t exciting enough; broadcasting live to the community and the world with top class equipment, playing catchy jingles and surrounded by friends!

This week, however, we will have a BBC presenter in our studio to join us as we present our weekly show. You will notice a new name on the running order for this week as Ben Prater from BBC Wiltshire will be joining us. Tune in from 1.30 pm on Friday and share our experience!

With three fabulous songs to choose from, the chance to text or email Josh and get involved or if you just want a half hour of top quality school broadcasting, click the link on westwoodwithiford.org or visit the player on radio.westwoodwithiford.org to listen live.

It’s been a very exciting week for us here at Westwood Radio. On Friday we marked a significant date in our calendar with our 25th anniversary show. That’s 25 live shows this year, of course!

The wonderful thing about our radio station is that it is entirely run and organised by the children. Our equipment and the training the children received allows this to happen. Back in October we were lucky enough to be in a position to bring in the fantastic Russell Prue of Anderton Tiger Radio to work with us. Russell is a world renowned expert and trailblazer in his field, working with young people from around the globe to develop high quality broadcasting skills, resilience and confidence through the medium of school radio.

Russell tailored a bespoke, high spec and incredibly easy to use radio station using touch screen technology, professional jingle software and everything we needed to switch on, broadcast and record with ease. Thanks to his vast knowledge of school radio and top class training the children were quickly on their way to becoming independent broadcasters and it is these skills that they have been developing over the past 6 months and 25 shows. We are very grateful to Russell for his continuing support and huge expertise in helping us to get better and better.

From the very first planning meeting each week on a Monday, where the children discuss the features that we will cover in their show, who will be on jingles, microphones and email to the music that they choose for listeners to vote on, everything is meticulously planned and scripted by the children. This has given them tremendous ownership and confidence and watching them work is a joy. They really do deserve the success and recognition that they are gaining for their professionalism and top quality broadcasting and with 1000 listeners a month tuning in to our 24 hour online station, not to mention the hundreds listening again on https://soundcloud.com/westwoodradio, Westwood Radio is going from strength to strength.

So if you haven’t yet had the chance to listen, here is our 25th show and we are looking forward to many more this year, beginning with a special show with the brilliant Ben Prater of BBC Wiltshire’s Breakfast Show next Friday, live online at 1.30pm. Ben has very kindly given up some of his time to join us in the studio to present the show and we just cannot wait! We are all immensely excited at having a BBC radio presenter join us and will be planning a super show to mark the occasion. You can listen by clicking the link on our website, westwoodwithiford.org, or by using the direct stream link http://stream.radio.co/sb4e04fd70/listen You can text or email the show, so please do interact with us, the children love connecting with their audience.

After an extended and very enjoyable weekend, we are now into another week and looking forward to our 25th LIVE weekly broadcast!

It’s hard to believe that after only 6 months on air, the children have reached this stage already, with so many quality broadcasts recorded and still available to listen again on https://soundcloud.com/westwoodradio

Here is the running order for this week’s show, so email or text us now if you’d like a mention on air this Friday. Last week we had so much brilliant correspondence from our listeners, so thank you!

Welcome back to another term and more to look forward to from Westwood Radio. Wasting no time at all, the children were back in the studio this lunchtime planning Friday’s show which will be live at 2.30pm. As you can see from the running order, it will be packed with top quality features and news from the community to the world.

With 1000 listeners a month now tuning into our station online, we are certainly growing and we have now also had listeners in 15 different countries around the globe. Truly international!

Join us this Friday on westwoodwithiford.org and email radio@westwoodwithiford.org now for a shout out from Georgia live on air.

This week we have had a tremendous amount of fun at Westwood Radio. Beginning with Mother’s Monday and a very special Breakfast Show – our current radio club’s first live show – as you will see from the previous post.

We have also welcomed back Emma Hodgkins of the Helen Hodgkins Trust to Westwood school to be interviewed for this week’s radio show about her work with providing clean water for families in Ghana through her charity. You can find out all about her brilliant work on http://www.helenhodgkinstrust.org/ Do please check out her blog and have a listen to her fascinating interview here:

On broadcast day, which as you will know is every Friday at 2.30pm, we welcomed Conservative MP for Chippenham and local area Michelle Donelan to our school. Michelle very kindly took time out of her busy schedule to join us in the Westwood Radio studio to be interviewed by Oscar, Lily and Finn who had all prepared their own superb questions to gain an insight into the life and work of an MP. Michelle was brilliant and gave us a fantastic interview. Here is the full interview:

With so much fantastic pre-recorded content, as well as a raft of original, professionally scripted material by the children, this was a very special show to end our term. It also proved to be our longest, even with Take That’s Greatest Day removed for copyright purposes.

Radio Club will be broadcasting on Monday 3rd April at 8.30am, so please do join us and get in touch with the show whilst we are on air by emailing radio@westwoodwithiford.org or texting 078600 17404, which will also come through as an email. I am so proud of our achievements again this term, Westwood Radio is going from strength to strength!

This week we have another fantastic show lined up for you with some new features on cooking club, after school clubs and more myths and legends from Orchid class blog on orchid.westwoodblogs.org. This show has been entirely planned and scripted in the children’s own meeting yesterday and with Isabel on emails and shout outs, some correspondence would be great! Text 078600 17404 or email radio@westwoodwithiford.org to get involved. With over 400 listeners to our station last week from 15 countries, we are growing by the day!

This week’s group have been hard at work this lunchtime planning a fantastic show for Friday. With the usual class news PLUS some special features and, hopefully, an interview with one of our parents who only won the Bath Half Marathon Women’s race!

We’d love you to get in touch and this week Izzy is on the emails so she will be waiting for your emails and texts to read out live during the show. 078600 17404 is the text number and radio@westwoodwithiford.org is our email. Here is this week’s show order: